Realigning International Trade Negotiation Asymmetry

Book excerpt: Recently, it has become apparent to developing countries in the WTO that their limited bargaining power has, in fact, been a stumbling block to obtaining desired negotiation outcomes in the multilateral trade system. Thus, to execute any fundamental changes to the status quo, there was a need to cluster together, pool resources and form alliances to leverage their collective strength in the negotiations. What remained unclear, however, was what role this increased coalition activity by developing countries played in the current WTO negotiations process. Therefore, the primary purpose of this dissertation is to describe how this shift toward coalitions as a negotiation strategy by developing countries occurred and to consider the possible implications of this coalition strategy for the future of the multilateral trading system. Due to the complexity of the Doha Round, I restricted my area of study to the Doha Round agriculture negotiations as a single case study, since agriculture is the undisputed "locomotive" of the Round, having set the tone for the majority of the negotiations. Using qualitative data, I captured a contextual description of four developing country agriculture coalitions -- Cotton-4, G-20, G-33 and G-90 -- as "nested cases" throughout the agriculture negotiation process from March 2003 to March 2010. I described the function of developing country coalitions in the negotiations by comparing and contrasting aspects of each coalition's negotiation strategy or tactics during the research study period. In sum, I investigate my preliminary assessment of the reason coalition strategy emerged as the dominant negotiation tool for developing countries in this particular WTO Round. I then describe how these coalitions maneuvered in the ongoing negotiations during the study period. At the end of my descriptive comparative analysis, I was able to explain the significance of coalitions as a strategic tool for developing countries in WTO trade rules negotiations as well as assess the specific role that each of the four case study coalitions have played in the negotiation process. In conclusion, the study highlights some of the lessons learned from developing country coalition strategy in this Round. The information derived could serve as a platform for further research in this area and eventually explain the raison d'être behind the negotiated outcomes.